Bully

Review by Anthony Morris

If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that bullying is a bad thing.

Wait, not everyone agrees on that – in fact, as Bully makes very clear indeed, for a lot of parents and teachers bullying is just “kids being kids”.

Which presumably means that when a kid commits suicide because of bullying, or brings a gun onto a schoolbus because of bullying – both of which happen in this US documentary – that also falls under the heading of “kids being kids” for these people.

Unfortunately, while director Lee Hirsch has done an excellent job of getting footage of high school bullying and the fairly apathetic attitude towards it from some school administrators, what he hasn’t done is turn that footage into a really great film.

Partly that’s a problem that stems from the nature of the subject: the bullying we see here seems almost offhand, cruel children picking on the weak for some slight amusement, and while the film has actual footage of some pretty nasty examples of bullying it’s never able to create the feeling of oppression that bullying causes in it’s victims.

We understand on an intellectual level that’s the case – there are extensive interviews with the parents of kids who killed themselves over bullying – but for such an emotional subject this doesn’t do all that good a job of making us really feel what the kids are going through.

The kids themselves pick up the slack, with twelve year-old Alex being the kind of decent kid your heart goes out to even as you can see the bullies homing in on him.

There are some great clips here and it’s certainly an issue well worth raising, but overall this doesn’t dig deep enough or really hit hard enough to feel like it’s doing the issues – or the kids – justice.

3 out of 5

Bully
Australian release: 23rd August, 2012
Official Site: Bully
Cast: Alex, Ja'Maya, Kelby, David Long, Tina Long, Kirk Smalley
Director: Lee Hirsch